


your fingers are my compass, they always point to my heart

by kwritten



Series: my fem-minis [16]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drusilla is the Slayer of Slayers, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: prompt: established relationship, someone paying a lot of attention to the other's hands (or what they're doing), midnight; no Spike anywhere near it or much angstsetting: au in which there was no Spike and Drusilla took the label of 'Slayer of Slayers' - some brief mention of S5, but primarily taking place between S6/7originally  published on lj 3.4.15





	

Buffy was late coming home from patrol.   
  
In the past year since the other Slayer had coaxed her into her bed and her heart, they had been able to work out an efficient sweep of Sunnydale. Buffy taking the North and Nikki taking the South.   
  
Generally with backup. Especially in Buffy’s case.   
  
Nikki still hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea of patrolling with bags of potato chips and a friend’s shoulder rubbing against hers. She didn’t even particularly like patrolling with Buffy, always too distracted by the blonde’s chatter and that deep, incessant need to make her mouth curl up like a cat’s.   
  
Also, they got in one too many arguments about Nikki not allowing Buffy to fight her own battles.  
  
Okay, so it had been a really weird year and they were still working out kinks. They were a good team as long as they weren’t back to back.   
  
Nikki fought too hard to keep Buffy safe, she lost track of the mission.   
  
(Buffy was guilty of the same the rest of the time, once nearly biting off the head of a cashier who had merely been less than polite with her. Nikki wasn’t surprised that she had traveled through time to find the world hadn’t changed all that much. She also wasn’t surprised or offended at her girlfriend’s complete ignorance. Watching Buffy learn that there were battles that she couldn’t solve with her fists was heartbreaking in its own way, that there wasn’t even anything to lash out at in the end because the thing that hurt someone she loved was built into the very fabric of the world she was born to protect, but it also gave their relationship a new inner strength Nikki didn’t think she’d ever take for granted.)  
  
Only that night, she was late.  
  
So Nikki did something rather unexpected.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _She fell.  
Later, she would say that she fell. Or that’s how it felt at the time.   
  
Except she just kept falling and falling. One minute she was fighting that vamp with the dark hair and crazy eyes and the next thing she knew, she was falling.   
  
Landing wasn’t a problem.  
  
She always landed on her feet – like a cat. Or that’s what her Watcher had always said, anyway.   
  
  
  
(Her mother. Her Watcher. They were one and the same.  
  
She thought for a long time that the Council had given her to a woman with similar bone structure to prohibit questions from authorities as she grew up. It was only when she was sitting in an ER with the woman’s thick red blood on her hands that they told her _biological mother_ in their crisp, English tones that were so far removed from the life she had led, from the rich beauty of her Watcher’s warm voice – even if that warmth was never directed towards her exactly. It was only after the monsters she was supposed to beat back killed her that they told her the woman she’d always assumed was a Council-appointed guardian was actually her mother.   
  
Not that it made any difference at that point.)  
  
  
  
(Finding her mother’s journal two years later was what changed everything, her rolling script a smooth contrast to the harsh tones of those steel masculine voices. A life of a young woman who _loved_ her daughter and wanted nothing more than to kiss her tears away, but bound by something deeper than today.   
  
The knowledge that you would die and your child would only survive if you kept your distance.  
  
So when she found out that she was pregnant – hey, even Slayers get to have one-night stands! – she did everything her mother’s journal and her restrained personality should have taught her not to do: she fell in love with her child.  
  
Madly.)  
  
  
  
  
She landed.   
  
On her feet, like a cat, just like always. Only she wasn’t where she should be and her duster was at her feet when she knew - _she knew_ \- it had been snug on her arms, flapping at her ankles, when she had started to fall.   
  
Into a different time and place – far away from the vampire with long dark hair and the son she had hidden behind a park bench when the monsters called out her name.   
  
Into the arms of a woman just like her – only everything that she wasn’t, thin and angular and playful and so sad it brought her own coldness to everything in the world into sharp relief.   
  
  
  
  
  
For the first couple of weeks they tried to get her home, her pull towards Buffy and those deep eyes tempered only by her burning desire to get home, to get back to her Robin.  
  
And then life moved forward. A dead mother, a stolen kiss. A Key and a Hell-God and an Apocalypse that they survived just by the skin of their teeth. And she settled in. Late night movie marathons with Dawn and attending classes with doe-eyed Tara and working on Xander’s team and being a bridesmaid; it was a nice life.   
  
They found Robin. He was full-grown and happy. A principal at a school down in the hills of Georgia her mother’s people came from. He was a stubborn mule as far as she could figure, but important to his community.  
  
  
_“What if he can only become this great thing if I’m gone?”  
  
“What if he could have been better with you there?”  
  
“Come on, babe. You know the survival rate of Slayers. I would have died long before he reached high school. At least this way, I know he finished high school.”  
  
“I wouldn’t fight to keep you if you wanted to go back.”  
  
“Willow says…”  
  
“Willow could pull a soul from hell if she put her mind to it. You just have to ask.”  
  
She didn’t. _  
  
  
Drusilla – the vampire that the history books said killed her – disappeared the night that she leaped through time like a wayward bird lost from its flock. Nikki had about as much interest in finding her as she did finding a way back home.  
  
Even if both of those truths had a sharp edge that would never fully heal.  
  
Anger and sorrow. They scraped against her skin just like always. The only thing softening her being the sweet smiles of a girl she couldn’t imagine ever living without. _  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It was summer in Southern California, a sticky, sweet heat that lingered in the air long after the sun had disappeared over the horizon. Luckily, Tara and Willow had concocted a witchy way to amplify the Summers’ air conditioning unit without putting a strain on Buffy’s boot-buying fund.   
  
And Buffy liked it _cold_. So even in the thick swelter of July, the house was cool and comfortable.   
  
And also empty.  
  
Willow had decided to run over to Los Angeles for the weekend to help Fred with a research project and had dragged Tara along. As they left, Nikki had heard whispered promises of museums and libraries. Dawn was staying over at Janice’s house – though Nikki had very strong suspicions that she had done no such thing, but that was something that could wait until morning.   
  
In the moonlight, Nikki smiled a rather wolfish grin and cracked her knuckles.  
  
  
  
At midnight, just as the clock in the hall was tolling, Buffy stumbled through the door, swearing as her boot caught on the rug.  
  
Nikki tackled her with one smooth movement, pressing Buffy against the door.  
  
“You’re getting old, Slayer.”  
  
Buffy grinned against Nikki’s neck, “Look who’s talking, grandma.”  
  
A silk handkerchief was pressed against Buffy’s eyes before she could realize Nikki had switched their positions, her knees pressing gently into the tops of Buffy’s thighs. None of Buffy’s previous relationships had ever felt as _even_ as this felt – loving a Slayer. They were matched in speed and strength and ruthlessness and emotion. Which meant that they could still surprise each other, could push each other, knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses as well as their own.   
  
It wasn’t the first time Buffy had been tackled in her own home, nor would it be the last. But it would be a hell of a lot more satisfying than their usual sparring sessions. (In an attempt to understand Nikki’s life, Dawn spent her first summer in Sunnydale gorging herself on movies and television from the 60’s and 70’s and somehow fell in love with Peter Sellers, insisting that they indulge her in a training regimen that included her trying to sneak up on them and attack at any moment. It spread to the rest of the household and now the Summers’ living room was a hotbed of witchy traps, sneaky teenagers, and rambunctious Slayers all trying to outwit each other at every turn.)  
  
“Trust me?” she whispered softly as she tied the thin cloth at the back of the shorter woman’s head.  
  
Buffy let out a sigh, “As long as you don’t mind mud. There was a lot of mud on my end of town tonight.”  
  
Nikki chuckled and guided her towards the stairs, her hands on Buffy’s waist and knees gently guiding them forward.   
  
“If I fall and there are bruises, I’m telling.”  
  
And then she was jostled up into Nikki’s strong arms like a doll, her arms pinned to her sides by the other woman’s strength, her feet occasionally skimming the wall as they made the climb up the staircase. Buffy hoped that her bed was at the end of this trip, because she was tired and it was midnight and Nikki’s skin smelled so good – so fresh. Like she had just showered. Buffy rubbed her cheek against the soft cotton of the old t-shirt dangling off Nikki’s tall frame and yawned. “I hate it when you carry me like this, I feel like a goddamn damsel in distress.”  
  
She could almost feel Nikki’s eyebrows raise, “Aren’t you?”  
  
At the top of the stairs, Nikki dropped her feet as if to set her on the ground, but Buffy used the opportunity to swing her body around, clinging with her legs around Nikki’s waist and her arms over her shoulders, their bodies pressed together length for length. She smiled, pleased with herself, “Tonight I’m a blindfolded monkey.”  
  
Nikki kept walking, her hands supporting Buffy under her thin thighs, “Mhmm.”  
  
Buffy was trying to count the steps that Nikki was taking, trying to anticipate when they would reach the bedroom and Nikki would turn and either release the blindfold or torture her for a while first. Man, she really hoped this was a sex thing and _not_ a tricky attack game because she was losing to Dawn by three points. Everyone kept taking advantage of her love of chocolate.  
  
Except Nikki was all distracting with her thin shirt and no bra and clean-smelling skin and her hands so patiently on Buffy’s thighs. And okay sometimes being a damsel was great – especially when she was injured like that time with the bear-horned-beasties – but knowing that you could not only climb your girlfriend like a puma, but that she could continue walking through the house with your weight on her hips was definitely a turn-on.   
  
And then Nikki was still walking forward when Buffy was pretty sure she should have turned right into their bedroom at least three paces before and … she lifted her head and sniffed. Was that chocolate?  
  
Her stomach gurgled.  
  
“Patience,” Nikki admonished as she untangled Buffy’s legs from her waist and set her on the ground, “is a virtue they say.”  
  
Buffy scowled, “Does that mean you are keeping the chocolate hostage from me?”  
  
“No, it means that I’m taking your clothes off now.”  
  
Buffy cocked her head to the side as she felt phantom hands tug at the bottom of her shirt, “But leaving the handkerchief?” She lifted her arms obediently as her shirt was lifted up and flung to a faraway corner somewhere behind her left ear.   
  
“That’s the deal,” Slayer reflexes had Buffy’s jeans around her ankles in seconds.   
  
Once, Giles had tried to train her with a blindfold. It didn’t work. He said that with proper training, a Slayer’s other senses could become heightened. He eventually gave up and took Nikki into the training room instead. She was better at smelling and hearing and feeling. Buffy needed her eyes, they were her equilibrium. She could see nearly as well in the dark of midnight with her own two eyes as she could at three o’clock on an overcast afternoon. Which meant that now, in this space that smelled like chocolate but she was pretty almost definitely sure couldn’t be her bedroom, her very determined and quick girlfriend was able to dispose of her clothing almost immediately, leaving her standing alone and exposed and very naked.  
  
“I really hope that Dawn is elsewhere.”  
  
“She’s with Janice,” the voice was right next to her ear, strong fingers brushing back and pulling Buffy’s long hair into a sloppy bun at the top of her head.   
  
Now look, hair is not an erogenous zone. And she read once in a _Cosmo_ that everyone has their own personal zones but Buffy has never been a ‘please pull my hair’ kind of girl. Like, sure sometimes those hands need something to hold onto in the act and that’s totally understandable. And sometimes when you are laying on the living room couch watching _A Shot in the Dark_ for the umpteenth time and listening to your sister tell you something about a newly discovered dinosaur and your girlfriend is running her fingers through your hair then yeah – that’s just exactly where you want to be and you don’t move and it’s perfect and feels like home. But it’s usually not a turn-on.  
  
Standing in the middle of a room with chocolate assaulting her sense of smell and totally naked and the only thing she can feel are the tips of Nikki’s fingers scraping gently across her skull… yeah. Suddenly the mundane becomes a turn-on.  
  
It also means that Nikki is standing far enough away that Buffy can’t sense her body heat, can’t get a strong sense on where the other woman is, can’t pick her out of the … heat…   
  
On the very edge of her senses she can feel a slight steam or heat. Is she near a window? Fucking Nikki better not have put her butt-naked in front of a window as a game… firstly, she’d already sternly scolded the entire household on keeping the windows shut while the ac was on (Tara spending the rest of the week haunting the house wrapped up in an old sweatshirt of Xander’s and staring balefully in Buffy’s general direction) and she’d really hate to have to end this game of nakedness in a fight over an open window.   
  
She whirled around the second she felt the hair-tie snap into place, fingers searching for Nikki’s warm body. “What are the rules of this game exactly?”  
  
A hand on her elbow and one on her back guiding her soundlessly … somewhere. There was a small patch of roughness on the thumb of the hand pressed into the small of her back and as she was thinking about whether it was a scar (strange place) or a callus she had never noticed (how?), Nikki had lifted her off her feet again, only to lower her gently into…  
  
A hot bath.  
  
A scaldingly hot, chocolate-scented bath.   
  
The cool air outside of her new cocoon raised the hairs on the back of her arms and she sighed, sinking back and relaxing, “I like this game.”  
  
“It’s only just beginning.”  
  
“How did you get the water to smell like chocolate?”  
  
“One of those bath bombs Dawn’s been hiding under her bed.”  
  
Buffy wrinkled her nose, “We’ll have to replace it.”  
  
“Or confiscate it in return for her _not_ being safely tucked into bed under Janice’s mother’s watchful eye.” Buffy started to sit up, but cool hands pushed her back down into the bath. “Shh… she can handle one night on her own. Punish her in the morning.”  
  
Fingers delicately stroked her arms under the water and Buffy shrugged, “Alright. You win. You always win.”  
  
  
  
  
  
Nikki laughed at the lie and dried one hand quickly on a towel sat next to the bath where she was kneeling, prepared for the next question that her Slayer put forth as if reading from a script.  
  
“This is just making me want choco—”  
  
Nikki interrupted Buffy’s train of thought by slipping a small shaving of rich, dark chocolate infused with orange into her mouth, running a finger over her soft lips in the same moment, unashamedly thrilled by the moan Buffy let loose at the taste, a sharp nick on her finger telling Nikki that she wanted more.   
  
“Tease.”  
  
And then Nikki proceeded to do just that, her fingers beneath the water and tiny bites of strawberries and chocolate wreaking havoc on Buffy’s senses.   
  
She didn’t know who got the better end of the bargain, her or the bath-bound Buffy. Nikki felt very much in favor of her position, watching her hands beneath the surface of the water etch new patterns on the skin of her exposed lover, notice every indrawn breath, every muscle twitch, every minute sigh that signified just how much pleasure she was able to give. It took this – a night alone in their dark, cool home with no impending doom – to have Buffy still beneath her fingers, to lay the thing she loved the most in the world bare and eat up every part of her without worrying the other woman might dart away into a shadow or project or turn the tables and demand equal play.   
  
She wasn’t even sure why Buffy had given in so easily, allowed herself to be lead, to be touched, to be fed and coddled and cleaned and stroked. It wasn’t like her bold Slayer to be so passive. Maybe it was the blindfold. Or maybe she should have tried this a long time ago.  
  
Or maybe they were at a place where pleasure didn’t hold in it an unspoken challenge, the way it had in the beginning – their slow dance towards understanding unsettled by crashing waves of power plays that felt like tongues on skin but were rougher and harder to define. They had calmed over the last few months, slowly but surely, their bodies no longer a battle ground. Not that it hadn’t felt so damn good, but a Slayer didn’t fall for another Slayer without some bruising.   
  
She came in soft, whimpering breaths, her body arching under the water, Nikki’s fingers slow and sure – aware of every inch of her skin in a new way that wouldn’t be forgotten.   
  
Buffy was loose-limbed, sated, and a little wobbly when Nikki finally pulled the plug on the bath and hauled her to her feet, dragging a soft towel over her wet form roughly. She sighed and sagged into Nikki’s body, “Let’s do that every night.”  
  
“I probably don’t have the resolve,” her voice was husky in response, darting away from inquisitive hands and guiding her tired Slayer into their bedroom with the slightest touches.   
  
  
  
  
Buffy had never before been more primed, more aware of her own body than she did in that bath and being dragged out of it, dried with the rough cloth of their softest towel, seemed to charge her nerve-endings all the more. Nikki’s fingers and palms had known exactly how and when to be light, when to be rough, when to be slow – and all under the shadow of darkness and beneath the steaming water of the bath. Buffy bit her lip, remembering the way those soft fingers had lingered over them as she was fed the tiniest slivers of chocolate and berries, as if a firmer touch would make her disappear.   
  
Her knees made contact with the bed and she crawled up on it, discarding the towel on the ground. Nikki huffed a little behind her and she could hear the towel being hung on the hook on the back of the door and she smiled.   
  
Happy, warm from the bath and cooled by the chill of the house, and curled up on the bed, Buffy smiled in the general direction that she could sense held Nikki’s energy. Now that she had given her senses time to adjust, it seemed almost as if it would be impossible to _not_ know where that raw, restrained energy was at any time. Like a pull from the center of her in any direction.   
  
“How much longer do I have to keep the blindfold on?”  
  
The scratch of cloth being lifted away from a body and falling to the floor, the slightest hitch in rhythm as she stepped out of her shorts that fell to the ground in a near-silent _hush_ , and finally Nikki sliding her naked, toned body onto the bed behind her own, pulling Buffy’s back against her chest and wrapping her arms around Buffy’s waist. “Later.”  
  
Buffy wasn’t patient. “Later when later?”  
  
Nikki shrugged, Buffy feeling the roll of her shoulders through her whole body, “Later.”  
  
Buffy tapped her fingers against the smooth arm on her waist impatiently and sighed and even tried turning around but eventually decided it wasn’t worth the energy – wrestling on the bed was all fun and games until they were bruised and sore and cranky and Anya asked for tips. Nikki didn’t budge.   
  
And eventually her worn out, happy, snuggled Slayer fell asleep.   
  
  
  
  
In the morning, Buffy woke to find the handkerchief had fallen off her eyes to around her throat. “Mornings are awful please can we boycott them?” she groaned, resenting the sunshine filtering through her window for being too sun-shiny.  
  
Nikki – her face still pressed into Buffy’s neck at the top of her shoulder blades – didn’t miss a beat, “I’d vote for you.”  
  
Of course a full thirty seconds later the front door slammed shut and they could hear the sound of Xander and Anya’s voices filter up from downstairs.  
  
“No…” Nikki tried to hold Buffy in bed with her, but the other woman slid out from underneath her arms in a move that was so practiced it almost felt like a dance to them now.  
  
“Clothing. I also vote we boycott clothing.”  
  
Nikki had pulled a pillow over her head, but as Buffy threw on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt she heard a muffled, “Next goddamn president of the USA.”  
  
  
  
  
  
A half hour later, Buffy was scrambling eggs and Nikki was whipping up pancake batter while Anya rambled on about the Magic Shop and Xander yelled out obscenities from his precarious position on the roof (he had gotten it in his head that they needed a new roof and was investigating the lay of the land or something). Buffy was having a hard time concentrating on the eggs and Anya’s story – too distracted by Nikki’s long and sure fingers as they cracked eggs and delicately held spoons and tapped across the kitchen counter.   
  
Anya narrowed her eyes, taking in Buffy’s cause for distraction, “I smell chocolate.”  
  
Nikki (never one for shying away from Anya’s brutal honesty) laughed, “We stole one of Dawn’s bath bombs last night.”  
  
She winked at Buffy’s blush and began designing a pancake in the shape of a heart on the pan, now standing shoulder to shoulder at the stove.  
  
Anya beamed, “Oh Buffy. If it’s your turn next time, I strongly suggest chocolate syrup and handcuffs. Xander says—” she clapped a hand over her own mouth and then giggled. “I’m … not supposed to tell you that.”  
  
Buffy and Nikki just laughed. They had enough blackmail on Xander to last them until they were all eighty and giggling toothless in rocking chairs.   
  
And anyway, Anya had a sixth sense for these things, no one could hide the inner workings of their relationship from her. It made the hard times easier and the easy times honest in a way that only Anya knew how to be completely and unabashedly honest.   
  
  
  
  
Two weeks later, after going for a run on a calm Wednesday morning, Nikki stomped into the bedroom to find Buffy sitting on the bed with a wicked grin on her face.  
  
In one hand was a bottle of chocolate syrup.   
  
In the other was the silk handkerchief and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs.  
  
“My turn.”


End file.
